AllisonJJ

We try to keep a steady stream of fonts going, since they provide a fair portion of our income. Normally that will be me - I have made over 700 of our 900 fonts, and they've always predominantly been my thing. Dan does them because of how I've done with them!

But sometimes if I'm particularly deep in the development of a game, Dan might cover for me on fonts to keep us releasing steadily and remaining as visible as we can be on font and design sites.

We're okay, promise! 😄 For me especially (I am behind over 700 of the fonts and 140 of the games), I've always erred on the side of instant gratification. I've got a few fonts that took a while, a couple of games that took months or even a year or so to make, and one game project I've been working on for nearly four years now, but I've got an experimental game style and an "optimised" font style that means my production rate is far higher than the average, even though the results are often smaller or simpler than other people's counterparts.

Dan is the same, just to a slightly lesser degree - he'll go about things more methodically, with more planning and overall effort. I wing things a lot!

...blinks

My answer:

I've always been fairly experimental both in fonts and games. A lot of what I do has been the result of playing with metrics and shapes (for fonts) or mechanics and graphical styles (for games). It's extremely rare that I end up with something I've made that is even remotely close to where I started off with it.

For example, my most popular game series, Maddening, was born out of sheer ineptitude. I was trying to make a game in which you run up a tower, akin to Nebulus and one level from Mickey's Wild Adventure. Completely failing to program that instead produced Maddening's circular effect (https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvNDA0NDkvMTgwMjU3LnBuZw==/original/VbL2q8.png) that actually ended up working in its favour.

Some other games started as homages (eg Ne Touchez Pas being openly inspired by Messhof's Flywrench) and ended up through sequels being warped more into their own thing.

Some fonts follow that too - being inspired by an existing logo - but most again are just me playing around until I like something I see, and then trusting my eye until it's done. Most of my font work falls into that category, such as Vermin Vibes!

Dan's answer:

It depends what mood I'm in for fonts. I normally have the end result in my head when I start, or the product I'm aiming it for (such as Organic Teabags - which I made specifically because I could see it being used on packaging for that). I definitely prioritise making fonts that I believe people could specifically use (Allie doesn't always do this!). My font previews often reflect how I'd see them being used, for example Somerton Dense being previewed on a pub sign.

That is admittedly a fairly business-heavy answer, but I do also appreciate the challenge of trying to make something that fits a particular brief!

In terms of games, character design is my favourite part. I take a lot of inspiration from nature - for example, Gyro Boss' firebrats and squids are based on real animals. Flore Ibrida, Squid Poker, Thysanura, Super Plush Festival and tons of my other games all feature animals heavily.

In terms of influence from other designers, I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy and have always enjoyed series like Mario, Legend of Zelda and Pokemon. I guess you could say the "feel" of my games is inspired by them. I want things to be lighthearted with memorable characters and fun mechanics, but none of my work is directly based on them or even very similar in terms of mechanics.

Tl;dr: experimentation, life preferences, and end goals!

We use a couple. I started off in 2005 using High-Logic's FontCreator, and made a few things casually off and on with it (that never really got anywhere online). I discovered the free modular site Fontstruct.com in 2011, which got me into making fonts as a more serious venture, then learnt how to use FontCreator properly in 2013 to expand my abilities. The vast majority of our modern fonts are made in FontCreator nowadays, although we do both still occasionally drop back into Fontstruct for certain styles (it's excellent for bitmap fonts).

No, to date we haven't. It's quite difficult to trace whether people have paid, since a lot of higher end commercial ventures will be using a design studio as a "middleman" which will be the ones that license the font from us. Not to mention, lawsuits are expensive!

Rockstar have used a couple of our fonts in packs for Grand Theft Auto Online. From memory, the Juggernaut) expansion used Sheeping Dogs and another expansion I can't immediately bring to mind used Toe the Lineless.

I'm with you on WWE fandom! I've seen a smattering of our work on smaller things within the company. From memory:

• Cesaro and Sheamus' current attire (as The Bar) features Gang Wolfik on the back side of their trunks
• When they did a Rocket League tournament recently, the team featuring Sasha Banks and Neville ("Nasha") used Sheeping Dogs for their team logo
• The original Cruiserweight Championship used Berate the Elementary for a number of stage graphics
• A recent Matt Hardy t-shirt used The Wild Breath of Zelda
• Indirect, but Flo Rida's My House EP used Vermin Vibes, and he was wearing a shirt with the album art on during his "rap-off" with Bo Dallas - and of course, My House was used as the theme for one of the recent WrestleMania PPVs

I've also seen at least one usage of my/our work in Impact Wrestling, CZW, NJPW, and a number of other indie federations.

And thank you as well! A big part of my modern wrestling fandom definitely comes from all the little idents, graphics and themes that the various wrestler graphics, PPVs, tournaments, merchandise etc bring to the table!